No colour coding, Punjab to tag containment zones

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 18

In line with the Centre acceding to Punjab’s request to do away with colour coding, the state will now have only containment and non-containment zones.

As per the Health Department guidelines, an area around the epicentre of 15 or more cases in a village/ward, or a small group of adjacent villages/wards, will be treated as a containment zone, with physical parameters to clearly define the same in terms of access and size. Concentric area around the containment zone (radius up to 1 km) will be treated as a buffer zone.

In all these zones, the department will carry out intensive and continuous house-to-house surveillance and contact tracing, with special focus on vulnerable and high-risk population. Containment period would be a minimum of 14 days, to be extended by one week if more than one new case comes up in this period.

Referring to the continued entry of migrants, NRIs and others via special trains and flights, Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, during a review meeting, said so far 60,000 Punjabis had registered for return to the state. Besides, 20,000 NRIs were also expected to return.

As of date, more than two lakh migrants of the 11 lakh who had registered on the special portal created by the government had left Punjab, the Chief Minister said.

As many as 20 trains were leaving Punjab every day, with 15 scheduled for UP and six for Bihar on Monday, Capt Amarinder said.

On being informed that the state was receiving requests from migrant labour from other states like UP and Bihar to return to Punjab to work in the fields during the paddy season, the Chief Minister directed the Chief Secretary to work out the modalities for the same with the Centre. All such workers shall have to be quarantined in villages they would be working in, he said.